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As I was recently rooting around in my loft for something, I found my big macpac, and realised I’ve had it for 10 years this year. It’s the best rucksack I’ve ever bought, it has a lifetime guarantee, and it’s EXTREMELY well-made, so I thought it was worthy of a little shout-out.

I bought my matching big and little macpacs in 2007, before going to Nepal for a year.

Other than an unfortunate incident once where my Big Mac got ripped in an airport and needed to be patched (I sent it off to macpac and they fixed it up and shipped it back to me), it has held up remarkably well! In Nepal I used to keep it empty under my bed, but padlocked as my passport was in there, and when I lost the key, I had to beg the locksmith to cut through the padlock carefully not to damage the zip!

It’s incredibly comfortable, exactly the right size, and I love that it unzips like a proper suitcase instead of rooting around in a normal rucksack. I also love that you can fold in and zip up the straps when checking it in at airports so they don’t get damaged en-route.

My little macpac has gone with me EVERYWHERE in the last 10 years. It’s literally my everyday bag, it carries my laptop into work everyday, it goes with me on mini-breaks and weekends, and in addition to all of the countries my big mac has been to it has ALSO been with me to Qatar, Madrid, Italy and Switzerland!

Obviously daily use for 10 years has left my little mac a bit grubby, but considering what it’s been through, it’s holding up INCREDIBLY well! It’s even still mostly waterproof, as I learned after a can of tonic water exploded inside it once in the Philippines…

This little bag goes with me pretty much everywhere, is still sturdy and comfy after 10 years, and it zips onto the front of Big Mac (although I hardly ever do that).

So, all in all, as a fairly frequent traveller, I give these bags 10 out of 10 and highly recommend them for your travelling adventures.

In a recent conversation with my dad, I realised that in his 70+ years, he has travelled to a huge number of countries, (34 and counting!) so I thought it was worth listing all of mine out too to see how we compare!

My dad also pointed out that the majority of his travelling happened in his 20’s and 30’s, as like most people, once you settle down and have kids you tend to travel less often, so here is our combined list: Continue reading →

A fab weekend in Melbourne, officially my favourite city in the world, to see some old friends and generally be as hip as possible. View of the snowy mountains from the plane… Eating a ludicrously hip (but delicious) brunch at … Continue reading →

My bedroom in the process of a well-honed packing process. It’s not chaotic at all, honest. Got my plane essentials – neck pillow and panda mask, check! Some pics from out and about near my dad’s house in Crow’s Nest. … Continue reading →

After my previous post Death vs Taxes, in which I outlined the ongoing saga of my tax disaster, there have been some improvements in the whole thing. However sadly there has also been some death, so I thought I would write about both here. Continue reading →

So, while flipping back through my facebook posts searching for something unrelated, I thought I would put together a little montage of snippets from the last 6 months of my life for all my readers out there.

I realise most of my blog followers are also friends of mine on facebook, so this will be boring and meaningless for them (they get to enjoy my awesomeness on a regular basis via my facebook posts, and often also in person), but for those of you out there who follow my blog and don’t know me in person, or are not friends with me on facebook, (and assuming you are interested), here’s a little bit more of what it’s like in my head, and in my life, in short, bitesized chunks…

2nd June 2015

A day in the life of Maya (abridged version):

1) Woke up, went to work, decided it was far too early to read any stories about mass graves, and selectively deleted those emails, thus maintaining my cheery disposition a bit longer (ignorance is a beautiful thing sometimes).
2) Went to a cash for work payout and met not one, but two beneficiaries called Saddam Hussein.
3) Reflected that names such as Saddam Hussein will no doubt be significantly less popular these days, and will probably soon be extinct, along with names such as Barry and Clive….
4) Started what will no doubt be an endless cycle of edits to a document I am co-writing with an American, in which we both continue to change the spelling of “labourer/laborer”.
5) Felt guilty that I failed to do my daily 7-minute workout, managed to counter-balance it by actively nothaving a cornetto after dinner. Felt so proud of my self-control I rewarded myself with a gin and tonic. Dieting in Maya’s world is an extremely complex process…

After Thailand, I popped over to Oz to visit my dad and a few good friends. I was mostly in Sydney, but also went to Melbourne for the very first time, and fell completely in love with the city, and … Continue reading →

One thing you learn to accept as an aid worker is that you are never going to have a small, or especially environmentally-friendly carbon footprint. There are just too many flights involved! Not only do I travel to far-flung and exotic places for work, and then generally want to take holidays around the general area of wherever you happen to be, but I also have family in the UK and Australia that I try to visit once in a while, and a lot of friends having fabulous destination weddings at the moment in places like Canada and France! I think 2015 might turn out to be a record-breaking year for me in terms of flights and travel, as I look back at everywhere I have been this year, and am simultaneously busy planning both work trips and holidays for the coming months. I’ve decided to map it out compared to last year, which was also quite travel-heavy….

2014: I can’t remember how many internal flights I did in the Philippines, but if I had to guess I’d say

Sorry for the lack of posts. I’ve just come back from 3 glorious weeks on holiday, which I spent in Leura, Sydney and Perth, hanging out with friends and family, drinking wine, eating cheese, and generally having a lovely time.

Of course now I’m back in the Philippines, hidden under the smog of Manila, and suffering from a rather epic attack of the post-holiday blues, so I thought I would post some pics of my holidays to cheer myself up….